


Ten Years On: A Decade Gone

by endemictoearth



Category: My Mad Fat Diary
Genre: F/M, School Reunion
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-02
Updated: 2015-11-02
Packaged: 2018-04-29 14:20:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,597
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5130782
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/endemictoearth/pseuds/endemictoearth
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Finn and Rae meet somewhat unexpectedly at a ten-year college reunion.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ten Years On: A Decade Gone

**Author's Note:**

> There was a prompt reblogged recently, and my mobile app was being crap, and all I could remember was two people who didn’t get along in school meet up at a reunion. I tracked down the actual prompt, but I didn’t do most of that. I just made this an AU where Rae and Finn didn’t get together in college, but sort of low-level antagonized each other for a year or two before the gang parted ways.
> 
> Anyhow, I hope you enjoy this little tension-filled one shot!

The town hall has been tarted up with balloons and crepe paper, and that terrible silver fringe they hang around those folding catering tables. As they walked in an hour earlier, Archie slapped Finn on the back and wheezed, “Ten YEARS, mate! Can ya believe it?” He’d shaken his head then, and he was still shaking it, now that Archie had abandoned him for the moment to attend to a more pressing matter.

He’s fake smiled at a dozen girls, well, women now, who’ve flitted up to get his attention, like hummingbirds at a feeder. Asking how he’s been, but really trying to determine if he’s attached. He keeps his right hand in his jeans pocket, but still catches a few trying to look. 

He’s not. Married. He hasn’t been a monk, but the last ten years of his life haven’t been a blur of sex, either. He sees another woman grip her drink, toss her hair, then start over to his spot by the dessert table.

He sighs every last bit of air inside him out through clenched teeth. He deflates for a minute, then takes a sharp inhale and shakes his head again as he heads to the nearest exit, fighting through the sound of boy band drivel and the flashing multicolored strobe lights. He flashes an apologetic grimace at the inadvertent last straw on his way out.

Walking round the side of the building, he looks for an alcove where he won’t be discovered. He hasn’t really smoked in about five years, but all this bullshit is making him itchy for a cigarette.

“The FUCK am I doin’ here?” he mutters under his breath as he tries to light the rumpled B&H he tucked into his breast pocket for just such an eventuality.

“Been wond’rin’ the same thing myself,” comes the unexpected response to his rhetorical question.

His head jerks up to see who answered him and sees her, making out her form in the shadow where the two walls met. Rae. Rae something. Duke? No, definitely not that. He doesn’t let himself get away with that shit. “Rae Earl?” he whispers.

She starts at her name. “Huh! Who’d’ve thought Finn Nelson’d remember me, let alone my name?”

Finn furrows his brow at this. They used to snipe at each other all the time, he remembered her name immediately. Actually, back when they used to get on each others’ wicks, he used to idly wonder if it’d ever lead to something. You know, like all those movies where the men and women who would bicker with each other ended up realizing they were more alike than they knew. But she would never give him an opening, never gave an inch of ground, and it ended up a two year stalemate that went stale for good when she moved off somewhere. Probably went to uni. Probably been busy doing something as brilliant as she was.

After too long a beat, he shakes his head. “Why wouldn’t I remember you?”

She scoffs. “No reason, I guess. Just didn’t figure I was very memorable.”

He takes a deep drag of his cigarette, then holds it out to offer her one. She declines with a shake of the head. Her hair is as long as ever, and catches coppery glints off the sodium lights that illuminate the exits of the building.

“‘Course I remember you. You were the only girl who gave me a hard time.” Such a very hard time, he remembers.

She snorts a laugh, which makes him grin.

“What the fuck ARE we doin’ here?” she asks, crossing from her spot on the perpendicular wall to stand nearer Finn.

He shrugs. “I came with Archer; he wanted to see if Barnstable would show. We made a bet a few years back an’ … anyway. He’s here, and Arch is … I guess you could say ‘settling’ it.”

Turning his head, he can see her face very clearly now, eyes now accustomed to the dim.  She smirks her plump lips. She was always like this, barely fathomable; he was never able to get much out of her, other than she was amused at everything. He’d be more upset if everything weren’t so fucking laughable.

“So,  _that’s_  who’s in the cloak room, moaning and groaning. Chlo and I were wonderin’.” She glances over, eyes sparkling darkly.

He takes another drag and gives her a grin, releasing a stream of smoke out of the corner of his mouth. “It makes ya think,” he muses, looking back at the street.

“Mmmm?” she hums in curiosity.

“Well, like, if Archie’d gotten the bottle up to make a move all them years ago. Would they’ve gone out? Had a fling? Gotten hitched in Hawaii?” He flicks the ash with his thumb and bites in the inside of his lip before asking, “Would anythin’ be different, if they’d gone for it?”

Rae is quiet next to him. The longer she’s silent, the more he’s aware of her. This mountain of feelings and flights of fancy he’d entertained all those years ago are piling up in his mind, like his subconscious has flooded and all the debris is rising with the tide to the forefront of his brain. Maybe he should tell her. Tell her that he wasn’t here just to win ten quid off Archie. That he’d silently hoped, tricking even himself into thinking he hadn’t hoped, that maybe she’d be here. And that maybe they’d talk. He hadn’t gotten to the snogging each other in the cloak room level of hoping, but he was never much of an optimist.

Rae clears her throat. “Wow. I … I’m not sure where that sort of thinking gets you. I mean, I’m sure we’ve all got regrets. What ifs … that we wonder about. But, does it do any good … wonderin’?”

He glances over his shoulder, too curious not to see her expression. It’s wistful, maybe a little melancholy.

“ _Do_  you wonder about stuff like that, though?” he asks, careful to keep his voice even.

She pulls her top lip in, worrying it with her bottom teeth for a moment, then sighs. “I mean, I s’pose.”

He smiles at this. “You used to give me such stick for sayin’ ’S’pose’, y’remember?”

Her smile is automatic, involuntary. She hesitates a split second before saying, gruffly, “S’pose I do.”

They laugh together at the recollection, at her playing on their memories. When they stop, she says, in her own clear voice, “S’pose I did. Sorry.”

Time is folding in on itself; he feels like he’s seventeen again, so unsure and yet so full. Full to the brim of longing and hope and fear. And he can’t stop himself from asking, at the same time she starts to say she should go back inside and find Chloe, he asks, “Would anythin’ be different if I’d gone for it?”

She’s pushed herself off the wall, and is now stopped in her tracks, as if suspended by wires. He can’t even tell if she’s breathing. In the second before she can gather her wits and build her defenses, he strikes again, erasing all doubt from her mind. “With you.”

He can almost see her mind taking the words he’s said and holding them up to the light to see if they’re made from something like the truth.

Her eyes are so wide he can see the whites of them gleaming in the shadows.

“Did you ever wonder about me?” He is compelled to keep saying words, since she won’t. Or can’t.

She totters back against the brick wall, and he moves to put his hand on her arm for support. He didn’t mean to shock her. To unnerve her this much.

She looks at his hand on her arm, and then up at him.

“Sorry, I shouldn’t’ve …” he mutters, his decade old feelings being eroded by regret. “C’mere, let’s, we can go inside, or sit …” He runs his tongue along the edge of his incisors, wanting to bite down hard. “ … or I could just leave ya alone.”

He pulls his hand away, prepared to walk away. He won’t try to find Archie. They can debrief in the morning. There’s a bottle of vodka back at his dad’s he can crawl into.

“No, I’m sorry. I just … I  _did_. All the time. I just … never imagined that you wondered about me. Well, in my imagination you did, but not … not for real.”

Now it’s his turn to be knocked back against the wall. They both lean there, grateful for the bricklayers who made it, staring helplessly at each other.

“Are you—?” Finn starts, but isn’t sure how to finish his thought.

“Am I what?” Rae whispers in response. “Married?” she smiles weakly.

“Well, yeah, I guess. Or … anythin’?”

“No, not married. Nor … anythin’.” She looks down at the laces of her shoes. Without looking up, she ekes out a tiny, “You?”

He shakes his head, and when she doesn’t hear a response, she glances up to see his answer: no.

She smirks again, but this time it’s soft and he can tell it’s her letting him know something. That she’s cautiously optimistic. She cocks an eyebrow, too, and says, “No?”

He steps toward her. “No,” he says.

“Did you want to sit, maybe?” she blurts out. “Like you said? Sit and … talk?”

Finn reaches out to gently trace his forefinger along the outer line of her forearm, down the outside of her palm, and then hooks her pinky, tugging her along to a nearby bench. “Sure,” he says. “We can start with talking.”


End file.
